PHOTOS: Planting a tree in honor of Arbor Day at White Park

Kids from the Boys & Girls Club kindergarten class pick up dirt from the pile while helping plant a white pine at White Park in honor of Arbor Day on Friday morning, April 25, 2014.

"When you walk past this tree, you can tell everyone that you helped plant it," Modern Woodmen of America's Jim Milliken told the kids. (ANDREA MORALES / Monitor staff)

Ishan Sujin shows off his dirt-coated hand while playing in the hole where a new white pine tree was planted in honor of Arbor Day at White Park on Friday morning, April 25, 2014.

(ANDREA MORALES / Monitor staff)

Marcella Tonge shows off a cold clump of dirt she scooped from the pile that was being used to plant a white pine at White Park in honor of Arbor Day on Friday morning, April 25, 2014. Tonge is part of the Boys & Girls Club kindergarten class that scrambled around the new tree and filled the hole with dirt.

“Why do we like trees?” Mayor Jim Bouley asked the group of more than 30 kids gathered around a pair of ready-to-be-planted white pines at White Park yesterday morning. Answers were shouted as hands went up. “Oxygen.” “Shade.” “Syrup!” The kids, from Girls, Inc. and the Boys & Girls Club, were at the park to help the Modern Woodmen of American and workers from the Concord General Services Department plant the trees in honor of Arbor Day. The nationally celebrated day that encourages tree planting and care comes around every year on the last Friday in April. Little hands scooped up piles of dirt near the hockey rink to help fill the holes in the ground that are the new home for the white pines.

Why white pines??? Just curious here - how do they decide what trees to plant. You'd think that in the interest of diversity, white pines would be last on the list of trees to plant. Was there a scientific method to deciding what tree species to plant in White Park as part of this Arbor Day event?